Nickel: In this picturesque village in Ireland, Packers punter Daniel Whelan learned to kick

ENNISKERRY, COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND and GREEN BAY – Sometimes, it feels like Daniel Whelan is the unsung hero of the 2023 Green Bay Packers. With a dull offense and a 2-5 record to start this season, the new punter has been called to duty 29 times. Whelan quite often is the last man standing, the last chance to send that ball airborne, fending for every yard of field position on a young team starving to find better footing in the NFC North.

The 24-year-old Whelan is fearless in the face of these sometimes dire, sometimes disappointing circumstances, and there’s no mistaking where that bravery comes from. It’s beyond his talent, the long legs, his work ethic, the all-around athleticism.

That grit comes from a field in County Wicklow, known as the garden of Ireland, and a little Disney-like town called Enniskerry. Despite all those pretty descriptions, the field where Whelan played his youth soccer is a swath of open green land, with rocks and rabbit holes, shifting turf and soggy ground, possibly permanently saturated from the crying clouds. But Whelan could launch the soccer ball from beyond midfield and score a goal at the tender age of 10.

Today, the back of Whelan’s Packers gameday helmet features the Ireland flag next to the American one. He's the only Irish-born player in the NFL, having made it from the XFL and, before that, college football at California-Davis. While it’s been years since he last lived in Enniskerry, and his Irish accent is undetectable (his Gaelic is admittedly awful), Whelan stands tall for the country from which he came.

“We go through a lot,” Whelan said. “The country itself – there’s not many of us. You kind of have to hold your own. You just grow up like that. Play in the dirt, the mud. Anything. You have to. There’s no, ‘you can wait until tomorrow ...’

“I still got my values. I don’t think that will ever go away; that’s probably why I’m still here.”

Ireland is a country of scholars and storytellers, of monks and musicians.

And kickers who beat the odds.

Daniel Whelan grew up in Ireland playing soccer, one of the country's three most popular sports

The last time the NFL had an Irish-born player was 1985, when kicker Neil O'Donoghue played for the St. Louis Cardinals. How is it possible that it would be nearly four decades later when Whelan joined the Packers? Ireland is full of athletic talent.

And yet it is highly improbable for an Irishman to cross over to our weird game. Americans call it football even when it actually requires a foot on the ball for just a handful of plays in an entire game. It’s bizarre to a non-American.

But there are other reasons we don’t see many natives of Ireland in the NFL. First, Ireland is roughly the size of the state of Wisconsin, with just six cities in the whole of the Republic. Now, as an island of 5 million people, almost every young boy in Ireland grows up learning to kick a ball. The three most popular sports in Ireland are soccer, Gaelic football and rugby − and kicking is the required skill. The NFL is nonexistent on the sports-minded consciousness of the Irish.

Whelan was no different.

“That’s all we do is play sports. It’s so outdoorsy out there,” Whelan said.

He was the field hockey captain. He played fly half in rugby. He swam and ran cross country. He played tennis. Played cricket.

He tried and gave up on Gaelic football after two weeks because he found the altered kicking stances too unusual.

But Whelan excelled at soccer. The now 6-foot-5 punter towered over his peers even at a young age and used that powerful leg swing to his advantage.

“I would just shoot it at the goal and score all the time. No one could ever stop it,” Whelan said. “I kicked a lot. That’s all I did, was play soccer.”

Enniskerry, a village in Ireland, has a special beauty, but sports are part of the landscape

Sports and school were the center of Whelan’s world.

His mother worked quite a lot, first at the Shelbourne hotel in not-too-far-away Dublin, and then at Powerscourt hotel and golf course, one of the premier clubs in Ireland.

Enniskerry, with its clock tower in the center and rows of restaurants and businesses around the town circle, was a good place to grow up, so beautiful Disney dressed it up just a little and filmed the movie "Disenchanted" there. The nearby Powerscourt waterfall is the biggest in Ireland.

“It’s so nice. There’s no other place in the world like this,” Andreas Traem said.

German born and Irish adopted, Traem was Whelan’s youth soccer coach in Enniskerry and to this day appreciates both Enniskerry's beauty and history and Whelan’s opportunity to foster his unique talents and abilities within its community.

Whelan’s first primary school in Rathmichael called Aravon (which is now John Scottus Secondary School) was a private school – “quite posh at the time,” said Traem – and was also owned by Chris de Burgh, the famous Irish singer known for "Lady in Red". Actor Daniel Day-Lewis's son, Ronan, was in the same class as Whelan. “He was a good artist,” Whelan said.

“It’s like Hogwarts,” Whelan said. “We all had our houses.”

Whelan’s memories of his school: bonfires at Halloween, playing in the forest, his clarinet lessons to play in the band and orchestra. Lessons in Gaelic, Spanish and French. Whelan was a foreign-exchange student in France for a bit.

“I feel like I experienced more than any other child would at another school,” he said.

And sports were a big part of the extracurricular activities.

“He showed at a very early age that he was very sporty,” Traem said. “He was big in running; he was great at rugby. He was an athlete. He was great in swimming as well. And he was great at soccer.

“He was unbelievable; he managed to kick well across the pitch when he was a little kid. I was not able to do that and I’ve been playing soccer all my life.”

Said Whelan, “I’m telling you, Ireland helped me figure out how to be an athlete, in every sport.”

Adapting to unkempt fields and legendary weather was part of playing the games for Daniel Whelan

Maybe the best preparation of all was that there was no grumbling about circumstances or conditions. While it is said that every Irish town has a church, a pub and a pitch, the playing fields vary all over the country. The weather is also legendary, mild in temperature throughout the year − at least compared to Wisconsin − but it seems like there are 10 kinds of rain. Sideways rain, soaking rain, sudden where-did-that-come-from rain. The land is green and the air is pure and Mother Nature is always in charge.

“It’s a little bit different than in the States,” Traem said. “Pitches are not manicured. They are makeshift a little bit. It’s more like grass rather than lawn.”

Said Whelan, “You’d play on the dirt. It doesn’t matter. For Sunday league soccer, and we’d travel to Dublin, it’d be trash. We’d be playing in a park. We’re not even playing on a field. You just get over it. Wear your cleats. There it’s kind of what it was like here (in Green Bay) today outside. Seasonal depression. Gray and dull and rainy. Little wind.”

But Whelan loved it anyway. And Whelan’s grandfather, when he wasn’t in Sunday church, would attend every one of Whelan’s matches and games for the Enniskerry and Greystones soccer clubs. They were close, spending time together on the farm, but there were no Sundays together watching the NFL on TV.

“In Europe? No. In Europe, football is nonexistent,” Whelan said.

Said Traem, “Because it’s not really big.”

Gaelic football is played on a bigger pitch, with 15 players. Traem said Irish football used to be the sport for the masses. Farmers' kids. Working class. GA games were all organized by parish.

Rugby was a private-school sport, considered by some for the more elite. Now, it's the fans' obsession. The Irish national team was ranked No. 1 in the world until it lost in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Whelan followed every bit of it and was crushed when the team lost.

Soccer (properly called football in Ireland) usually is the most popular game; when Ireland went to its first World Cup in 1990 and advanced as far as the quarterfinals, fans greeted the team when it got back to Ireland as if the country had won.

“Unbelievable. I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Traem said. “It took them four hours to get from the airport to the city centre. Irish people are very enthusiastic about sports. American football or baseball is very unknown. And, you don’t have the coverage. You have to pay for it.”

Does Daniel Whelan have a following in Ireland? Maybe, a little

But despite all this history, Whelan has made a following in Ireland.

At Poppies in Enniskerry, one of Whelan’s favorite places to eat since he has gone back to visit about three times in the past 10 years, employee Jack Norton − a rugby and GA player around Whelan’s age − knew of Whelan right away.

“I’m in a few fantasy NFL leagues,” Norton said. “I follow the Dolphins; I don’t watch all their games but I like to go for them.

“Obviously, it was big news over here when we saw Daniel on like Twitter and Instagram. It is a small sport here − not that many people play − but it is growing.”

Norton’s college has an American football team and an American football team trains at his rugby team, the Dublin Rebels.

While certain generations of Irish do not follow the NFL, it’s not hard to find the 20-something crowd that does, and will also keep tabs on Whelan.

“Yeah,” Norton said, “it’s on the up here, anyway.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Packers punter Daniel Whelan learned to kick in Ireland village